


Gold All The Way Down

by maniacalchimera



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Dark Themes (tagged per chapter), Found Family, Gen, M/M, Post-Canon, Side Characters Tagged as They Appear, Side Relationships Tagged as They Appear, Slow Burn, remind spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:47:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23135647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maniacalchimera/pseuds/maniacalchimera
Summary: The war has ended, the Light prevails. Things are returning to normal. But one little corner of Radiant Garden is having trouble figuring out what 'normal' means.Even returns to a home he wasn't sure he'd get back, and needs to readjust after a decade lost to his own darkness. Ienzo grapples with a childhood cut short, and the gaps his growth as a Nobody has left in his heart. And Demyx--no one seems to know what he's still doing here, least of all himself. Together, they struggle to reach an understanding none of them realized they needed.
Relationships: Aeleus & Ansem the Wise | DiZ & Dilan & Even & Ienzo, Aeleus/Dilan/Even (Kingdom Hearts), Demyx & Even (Kingdom Hearts), Demyx & Naminé (Kingdom Hearts), Demyx/Ienzo (Kingdom Hearts), Demyx/Zexion (Kingdom Hearts), Even & Ienzo (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 54





	1. in which things end

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bookwormally](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookwormally/gifts).



Delivering bodies should not supply such stable employment.

Demyx pauses, clouds of misty shadow swirling around him, and readjusts his grip on the replica. Its blank face thumps like dead weight on his shoulder and he rolls his eyes. “Employment,” he says aloud, “like I’m getting paid for this shit.” Maybe in Lexeaus’s cooking; not much else. Sure, Vexen has drawled on and on about atonement, about the greater good, and maybe he’s right, maybe there’s something to feel good about in stopping the end of all worlds, an inconceivable darkness, and an absolute douche of a person. But at the current moment, dragging an empty husk through the nauseating back corridors of oblivion, Demyx finds that the warm fuzzies aren’t doing much for him.

“At least you’ve got clothes on this time,” he sighs. The replica, predictably, doesn’t respond. Demyx hefts it further over his shoulder and starts to move again. It really is an unwieldy thing. He’s looking forward to this trip’s end, when he can set the replica on the table—not the ground, he’ll be scolded once again on the delicate nature of their project—take a seat, and nap, until this whole thing is done with.

They better not want to send him back for others. He’s already seen enough fighting today to last him a lifetime.

Demyx pats his face with his free hand, knocking some of the purple swirls from his vision. _Focus._ He’s been wandering for what feels like ages, and it can’t be much further—or at least, he fucking hopes not. In theory, the corridors should be a near-instantaneous form of travel, a compression of space in the dark in-between where distance has no meaning. Somehow, though, having a passenger always seems to drag it out. It’s probably something to do with keeping track of multiple people, in a place so intent on gnawing away at the very essence of anything living. “But you shouldn’t count,” he huffs at the replica. “It’s not like you’ve got a heart in there to lose.” It has the potential, he’s seen the first one gradually gain shape as the scientists pumped it with data, become something that looked like it could be _someone_ —like it could be Roxas. But that’s after weeks of work. Right now? _It’s full of important memories._ Demyx scoffs. Yeah, sure. Right now, it’s an empty manikin ripe and ready for some mad science; nothing more, nothing less.

So maybe he should stop talking to it like it’s listening. Demyx shakes his head, pushing some of the hair back out of his face. No wonder this trip is taking so long; he can’t stay out of his own head long enough to see where the fuck he’s going. Zexion’s lab, he knows how to get there. All he has to do is envision it, and the darkness will do the rest. _It’s not that hard._ Demyx shuts his eyes, resetting his vision. He can only take so much purple for so long. The corridor changes with fresh eyes and he can see it, barely ten steps ahead—a tear in the shadows, a ripple in the fabric of reality just waiting to be opened. Demyx grins and picks up his pace. One more delivery; he can hear the couch in the apprentices’ lounge calling his name.

He reaches the tear and pushes it open. The laboratory on the other side is bright only in comparison, but still Demyx squints as he steps through. _Announce your presence_ —there’s been many a time he hasn’t, and has been met with screaming and then a book to the face shortly thereafter. “Hey, Zexy-y-Ienzo,” he calls, lifting a hand, “I’m back with another bo—what the hell happened here?”

The lab is in complete disarray. Okay, it’s always in disarray, but it’s normally an organized type of disarray; Zexion, at least, always seems to know where everything is, despite the scattering of notes and constantly shifting screens. The scene before him is different, a whirlwind of meaningless chaos spread corner to corner across the room. Papers have been shoved every which way, some torn into pieces or smudged beyond legibility; one monitor is cracked across, and the others are either covered in static or dark altogether. But most disturbingly, the metal table that held Roxas’s replica is on the ground, flipped on its side and split clean in two.

For a moment, Demyx fears the worst. He drops his replica beside the portal, rushes further into the lab; and that’s when he meets eyes with Zexion, on the other side of the main console, looking pale and frazzled but—physically—no worse than when he last saw him.

“Demyx!” The slightest bit of color dashes back across Zexion’s cheeks. “What do you think you’re doing?! The replicas are to be handled with far more care than that!”

Demyx stops and lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. “Gee,” he grumbles, “glad to see you’re okay, too.”

Zexion straightens up slightly, pushing some of his hair back behind his ear. It never does anything to get any of it out of his face and it makes Demyx’s nose itch. “You are correct,” he says, with slightly more composure in his voice, “in that we had an incident occur, while you were out.”

“Oh, no kidding?” Demyx gives the room another look-around. He can feel it, he knows Zexion is glaring at him, so he keeps talking before he gets snapped at. “Where’s Roxas?”

The sigh Zexion gives is frustrated, and he brings a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “That is the crux of our incident, Demyx,” he says. “He _left.”_

Demyx gives it a moment of silence, to gauge if Zexion is just trying to be sarcastic. There’s no follow-up snappy remark, and so, cautiously, Demyx repeats, “He _left?”_

“He _left.”_ Zexion throws his hand out in front of him. “Sat up from the table, eyes blank, and then before I could say a word to him, he summoned two Keyblades and created this burst of light, shook the whole lab! And then, then—!” He pauses, catching his breath as he motions over the mess. “—he was gone!”

Demyx considers this for a moment. “…two Keyblades,” he says. “Wow, Roxas, always a show-off.”

“That’s not the point here!” Zexion drops both hands and storms to the middle of the main console. He taps at the screen, the only one Demyx can see that’s lit. “According to the backup data I was able to restore, Roxas’s replica still did not contain a heart at the moment of departure. A being without a heart should not have been able to summon a Keyblade—but I know what I saw!” A couple programs open, all full of code that Demyx can’t understand, and Zexion scrolls through them. “Now,” he continues, “that replica is out there, without a heart, waving around two Keyblades, and who knows what kind of trouble it could get into! Who knows what could take up residence inside it! If it gets anywhere near Xehanort—!”

Demyx leans against the edge of the console. He’s tired and he promised his body a nap after this bullshit, not—more bullshit. “Xehanort’s kinda busy right now,” he says. “He already has more vessels than he even knew what to do with. He’s not got anyone out looking for more, they’re all fighting, getting themselves offed to become key fodder. Pretty sure that, unless Roxas yeeted himself straight to the Keyblade Graveyard, you don’t have to worry about Xehanort getting his wiggly old man fingers into him.”

Zexion looks up at him, and while he’s still glaring, it might just be due to Demyx’s elbows on the counter. “…I suppose not,” he says at last. “But the fact still stands that we don’t know where Roxas’s body has gone, and we have no way to track it. I sent Aeleus and Dilan to check around the Garden, but we don’t know if it’s even on this world anymore! If we’ve lost it, all our work, all Even’s work—it was for nothing!”

“Mm,” Demyx says, not moving from his resting spot.

Zexion huffs frustration. “You sound incredibly unconcerned,” he snaps.

Demyx shrugs. “It’s not like you lost all of Roxas’s data, right? It should still be in the computer here.” He taps the console lightly with his knuckles. “So what if Roxas’s body is off somewhere doing whatever shit? If you can’t find that one, just pump all that data in Roxplica Two-Point-Oh over there.” He motions to his newest delivery, slumped carelessly by the shadowy remains of his dark portal.

“That’s—!” Zexion runs his fingers almost violently through his hair. “That replica is for someone _else,_ Demyx! What, did you think I sent you out for another one just for _fun?”_

“Maybe,” Demyx mutters. Sure, he figured his trip had a _purpose;_ but he was partially convinced that the purpose was just to get him out of Ienzo’s stupid silver hair for a couple hours. “I thought you wanted a back-up or something. Far as I knew, we had everyone we needed covered. Who _else_ is missing a body around here?”

Zexion pushes away from the console, storming past Demyx to squat beside the replica. He lifts one of its arms, as if doubting that it’s still attached. “None of your concern,” he says at last, like it’s an afterthought.

That’s what Demyx feels like he is sometimes, in this convoluted plan of building bodies and betrayal—an afterthought. He puts his hands on his hips, like it’d actually be imposing or something. “It’s kinda some of my concern?” he says. “I mean, I brought the damn thing over. Nearly got stabbed by an oversized car key to get it to you. I feel like I’ve earned the right to know what poor schmup you’re shoving into it.”

“It’s no one you’d know anyway.” Zexion doesn’t even look up at him, still meticulously examining the replica. “And it’s not the current concern. We need to find Roxas’s body. Or, if you’re so convinced it’s not a problem, floating around out there with its two whole Keyblades, we need to recreate his replica—and then, find another, to use for the person I was intending _this_ to be.”

“I read ya,” Demyx sighs, “loud and clear. Back to the goddamn graveyard, Demyx, go snipe another empty body and hope you don’t get murdered trying to grab it.” He pushes himself off the console, brushing some of his hair back. Dammit, but he really wanted that fucking nap. He lifts his hand, intending to open up another dark portal; but then there are rushed footsteps in the stairway and he stops to look behind him.

“Ienzo!” Lexaeus comes to a stop at the bottom of the stairs, face nearly as red as his hair. “Ienzo, you need to see this.”

Zexion stands up immediately. “Roxas?” he asks.

“No, something else,” Lexaeus says. “Something is happening. I think—Demyx?”

Demyx lifts a hand in a two-fingered salute, completely nonplussed. “Yo, Lex.”

Lexaeus blinks, processing, then shakes his head and looks back to Zexion. “The both of you should see it,” he says. “I believe it has something to do with the current clash between Light and Darkness.”

Really, Demyx would prefer not to be any more involved in this clash than he already has been. He was promised no fighting, and while so far it has held true, he keeps teetering dangerously close. But Zexion is already moving past him and what else is he going to do, sit in the ruined lab and talk to the empty replica some more? Following along with whatever this is sounds way more engaging; and it’s eons better than being sent back to the graveyard.

“Outside,” Lexaeus says, leading the both of them up the stairs and through the slightly brighter offices. This place is a maze, almost as bad as the Castle That Never Was, and Demyx keeps close behind the two of them so he doesn’t end up lost three wrong turns down a murder hallway. He has no idea how these guys navigate without the dark corridors; but somehow they make it to the garden doors in only a few minutes’ time. Lexaeus holds one open for them and Demyx follows Zexion out into the cold air.

It’s dark, is what he notices first. Fair enough, it’s easy to lose track of time when he’s constantly jumping between worlds. But he hears Zexion gasp and when he follows his gaze upward, he can’t see the stars.

Keyholes, hundreds—maybe thousands—of large, gold-rimmed keyholes are covering the sky. There’s so many that they’re just indistinct enough Demyx can’t tell what’s through them; it’s just a mess of different colors, scattered amongst the holes in the world. It sets a deep pit in Demyx’s gut, a kind he can only describe as a sickening void, an echo of hollow darkness as he looks up at a patchwork of disaster, hovering ominously above them.

“That’s bad,” he says.

For once, Zexion doesn’t snap at him. He looks back at Lexaeus, visible side of his face tugged tight with worry. “How long has it been like this?”

Lexaeus shuts the door behind them. “Twenty, maybe thirty minutes now,” he says. “I came right back to the castle once it began. Dilan had the same idea. He should be further into the garden.”

Zexion nods and starts to move down the neatly paved path. Lexaeus follows, and so Demyx does, too, eyes stuck to the sky. “It started with just a few,” Lexaeus continues, “but then more and more started to open, until it became what you see now. I don’t believe there’s been any more opening since we reached the castle.”

“There’s not really room for any more to open, is there?” Demyx motions upward. “The sky’s pretty packed.”

“The sky isn’t just a flat surface to pop holes in, Demyx,” Zexion says, and the sharp edge is creeping back into his voice. “It’s a three-dimensional space. For all we know, there could be thousands more of those, blocked from our vision by the others but still there, still opening us up to—to Light knows what!”

“So you’re a glass half-empty kind of guy,” Demyx mutters. He’s gathered as much. “Are things coming through them, then?”

“Not yet.” It’s Xaldin’s voice; he’s a flower bed over from them, and they come to a stop. Xaldin doesn’t look at them, a spear in one hand, binoculars at his face in the other. “They do look as though they connect to other worlds,” he says, “as far as I can tell from here. But nothing’s moving.”

“So it’s not some kind of attack?” Zexion asks, holding his hands out for balance as he tries to step over the flower bed and get to Xaldin’s side.

Xaldin offers the binoculars over once Zexion makes it across. “I’m not ruling it out yet,” he says. “Could just be a side effect from whatever they’re doing, but the second we let our guard down, it’s gonna start raining Heartless or some other shit we’ll have to deal with.”

_“You’ll_ have to deal with,” Zexion corrects him.

Xaldin rolls his eyes. “Aeleus and I will deal with, yes.”

Demyx is more than happy not to have his name included in that list. He glances to Zexion, who didn’t even push his hair out of the way and is using the binoculars one-eyed. Yeah, they can leave the castle defense to Xaldin and Lexaeus.

He brings his eyes back up to the sky. The keyholes sit, unmoving. If this is from the graveyard, worlds and worlds away—they can’t be the only ones affected. Demyx is unlucky and he knows it, but that seems a little much even for him. Maybe it’s spread across the other worlds as well, ones almost entirely disconnected from this conflict, that don’t have the slightest inkling as to what could be happening. It’s not hard to imagine the panic. They must think it’s the end of the world. _It could be the end of the world,_ Demyx realizes, and he shifts, bringing a hand to his stomach. The pit grows deeper, sinking like a stone in a way that’s almost sickeningly familiar. Would it be better, he wonders, to not know what was going on? To attribute this catastrophe to something else, the wrath of the gods, perhaps, and not know its concrete cause—a cause already set in stone millions of worlds away, one there would be no chance to change?

Demyx shuts his eyes and drops his head, trying to push out the lingering key-shaped shadows in the dark. It won’t look great if he gets sick in Ansem the Wise’s nice garden.

“—so maybe it’d be best to just keep everyone inside and observe until—Demyx?”

His head snaps up, and it’s easier to look when it’s at Zexion and not the sky. All three of them are staring at him, varying degrees of concern on their faces. “Huh?”

Zexion has an eyebrow raised; maybe both are, but Demyx can never see anything past that wall of hair. “Are you alright?” he asks. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s—what’s wrong?” What’s _wrong._ He’s been mocked for many a ‘dumb’ question but that might be the dumbest he could possibly conceive at this moment in time. Demyx motions vaguely towards the sky. “What’s _not_ wrong, Zexion? The sky is in pieces, this is pretty fucking wrong!”

Zexion steps back, dropping a hand to his chest. “Excuse me!” he huffs, and any trace of genuine concern has left his voice. “Forgive me for my shock, when as of yet you’ve greeted all danger with nothing more than casual indifference!”

“Ienzo.” Lexaeus’s hand comes down on his shoulder with a gentle sternness. “This is not the time for arguments. We must focus on task ahead. Dilan and I will put out a call to the Restoration Committee and make sure all civilians stay inside until the danger has passed. That includes the two of you.” Demyx has noticed that the one person in the castle Zexion will listen to without question is Lexaeus; and though Zexion’s face tightens, though he looks as though he’s just eaten a peeled lemon, it still holds true.

“Fine,” he grumbles. “You two be careful, do not get in over your heads with whatever happens here, alright? Dilan?” Xaldin has his eyes back to the binoculars, and pointedly does not respond. “I will attempt to contact the Guardians,” Ienzo continues, “and pray that they can lend some clarity to this situation. Demyx, come.”

Jackass. “I’m not a dog,” Demyx mutters, pushing some of his hair back from his face. But he’s not going to stay out here just to make a point, not with the worlds trying to end themselves above them. Zexion either doesn’t hear his mumbling or doesn’t care, starting back down the garden path, and with a sigh Demyx moves to follow. _Don’t look back,_ he tells himself, _don’t look back._ It’s a magnetic pull, the want to turn towards tragedy, and he takes a deep breath and tries to ignore it. The shattering sky is already branded into his memory; he doesn’t need to see it again. He will keep his eyes to the ground, and he will _not_ look back.

He looks back.

He’s a dumbass, he thinks immediately, but something in the looming horror keeps his eyes fixed even as he tells himself to pull away. He slows and reaches out to get a hand on Zexion’s arm. “What?” Zexion snaps, but Demyx doesn’t turn, still staring up at the sky.

“Look,” he says, lifting his free hand to point. In amongst the sea of keyholes, one is different; its center no longer opens to another world’s sky, and instead glows with an unnaturally bright light.

Zexion frowns, stepping back to Demyx’s side. “What is that?” he asks.

“Why would I know?”

Surprisingly enough, Zexion doesn’t smack him. “I wasn’t really expecting an answer,” he mutters. “Dilan, give me the binoculars.”

“I’m using them right now?” Xaldin squints at him. “Impolite child.”

“Apologies, that I forget my manners in a life-or-death situation,” Zexion spits back. “Give me the binoculars, _please.”_ Xaldin rolls his eyes, but he offers the binoculars over. Zexion reaches across the flower bed to take them and that’s when the sky explodes.

The light leaps from keyhole to keyhole, connecting them like glowing highways between the worlds. It spreads like a web, hitting one portal and then springing out to three, four, until the entire sky is alight like a single, brilliant constellation. Demyx drops Zexion’s arm and looks up with wide eyes. He should be scared, he should be _terrified_ —and maybe he is, but there’s an overwhelming feeling of wonder that pushes it aside as he looks up at a luminous firmament, a quilt of sparkling connections that makes the night sky shine like midday. The familiarity is comforting this time, like a warmth inside his chest. He drops a hand to it, to the place that shouldn’t have a heart. _One sky, one destiny._

There’s a flash, so overwhelming that his vision whites out; and when it returns, the keyholes are gone, and the sky is full of nothing but the dim light of the stars.

For a moment, no one speaks, a deafening silence that hangs over the gardens perhaps just as heavy as the sky mere seconds before; then, there’s a loud clattering, as Xaldin’s spear hits the ground. “Was _that_ it?”

Zexion spins around so fast that his lab coat smacks into Demyx’s side, sharp enough to hurt. “Was that—what do you mean, was that it?! That was _horrifying,_ Dilan!”

“Nothing happened!” Xaldin argues back. “We get a fucking, laser light show, and then it’s _gone?!_ I didn’t even get to fight anything!”

“I think that’s the best case scenario, actually!”

Demyx rubs at his eyes; they’re feeling incredibly heavy. The argument beside him fades into background noise like usual, and he ignores it to keep looking at the sky. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting, really. Nothing moves, nothing shifts or changes. The stars flicker like faint candlelight against the darkness. It’s as if nothing ever happened in the first place. Demyx hears someone shift beside him, and he pulls his gaze from the echoes of golden highways to Lexaeus’s face. “Is it over?” he dares to ask.

Lexaeus nods slowly. “I believe that it is over.”

Demyx hums, and drops his hands from his face. “Okay,” he says. “Then I think…I’m going to take a nap.”

Zexion turns, dropping his argument with Xaldin mid-sentence. “Excuse me, you’re going to what?”

“Take a nap?” Demyx offers. “It’s been a long day, and I for one am sick of all this action. I’m tired, and I need a break. I promised myself a nap.”

Zexion’s visible eye narrows, like the idea of someone else resting is somehow offensive to him. “We’re not finished here,” he says. “We still need to discuss the matter of Roxas’s missing replica, and our plans for the newest vessel, and—”

“Zex,” Demyx says, then, quickly correcting himself, “Ienzo. The world just almost ended, and then it didn’t. Maybe I’m being too optimistic, but I think that’s a good sign that old man Xehanort’s been stopped, and we’ve just earned ourselves infinite time to deal with your science projects. They can probably wait a couple hours, or at least wait for me.”

“We have no way of knowing that’s what happened!” Zexion sputters. “We could easily still be in danger!”

“Then wake me up if the sky starts falling again.” Demyx waves a hand and steps over the closest flower bed.

“Demyx!”

“Ienzo.” Lexaeus steps between them before Zexion gets a hand on Demyx’s arm. “We all deserve some rest after today. Let us fall on the side of cautious optimism and return to the castle. You can attempt to contact the Guardians, but after that, we’ll be taking a break.”

Lexaeus said it, so there should be no arguments. Demyx lifts a hand and opens a corridor behind him. “Cool,” he says. “I’ll check in with y’all later.”

“Where are you planning to sleep?” Zexion spits after him. “In the middle of all that darkness?”

Demyx shrugs. “It makes a pretty cozy blanket,” he says, and he steps into the corridor and shuts it, before Zexion thinks he’s serious and starts squawking.

He opens the corridor again with less than a thought and is in the apprentices’ lounge. The sofa looks oh-so-soft, like it’s bathed in heavenly light, and Demyx drops onto it like deadweight. They’ll probably come back here and find him, when all’s said and done, and he wouldn’t put it past Zexion to try for some prank while he’s napping—or, more likely than that, Xaldin. But at this point, he’s exhausted and he doesn’t care. He pulls the hood of his cloak over his head and then slumps against the pillow.

The keyholes behind his eyelids glow a brilliant gold until he finally fades into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I'm finally starting my first multi-chapter Kingdom Hearts fic. KH3 hit me in the face with Demyx feelings, weirdly enough, and here I am, over a year later, writing a fic that honestly was born only a month or so after we finished the game. Re:Mind finally pushed me to pick it up again and here we are. Hop on, it's time for Sam's Wild Ride through Found Family and 'These Characters Aren't That Deep But I've Got A Big-Ass Shovel.'


	2. in which breakfast is served

It’s another beautiful morning in Radiant Garden. The sun shines bright through the castle windows, not a cloud to deter it. Birds flit from tree to tree, chirping happily to greet the day, and the dew drops glint off the flowers to create crystalline rainbows, a carpet of glitter across an already dazzling landscape of color. The entirety of the castle courtyard, and the city as a whole, is singing with life and renewal, with rebirth and hope.

Ienzo tugs the curtain almost violently over the window, darkening the kitchen significantly. “How can you _stand_ it to be so bright in here?” he hisses. “You and Dilan both disgust me with your sun-loving ways.”

Aeleus doesn’t look up at first, carefully pouring hot coffee into the four mugs lined in front of the machine. When he does look up, it’s first to offer one of the larger mugs over the counter; only when it’s been taken from his hand does he lift an eyebrow. “Late night?” he asks.

“I haven’t slept.” Ienzo chugs a quarter of the mug without even waiting for it to cool. He sets it down on the counter and his elbows immediately follow, plopped down to keep his head from a similar fate. Delicious, bitter caffeine works not fast enough, and he yawns, not bothering to cover it.

“Do you even know what time it is?” Aeleus takes up the creamer from beside the coffee machine, pouring a generous amount in two of the mugs and leaving the largest untouched.

“It’s coffee time,” Ienzo says.

“It’s nine o’clock.” Aeleus brings the mugs over to the table and sets each one at a placemat, carefully laid at every seat. The smallest mug goes to the head of the table; Dilan’s, the largest, is placed to its left. Aeleus sets his own down at the spot next to Dilan’s before taking the seat. The two placemats across the table are left alone—Ienzo will sit shortly. “Working on anything in particular through the night, Ienzo?”

Ienzo stares down into the mug of liquid gold, letting the steam cloud his vision. He’s watched a cluster of bubbles travel the circumference of the mug three times when Aeleus’ words actually permeate into understanding and he looks up. “Mm? No, I was just…picking at things. Unfortunately I made no significant progress with any of them, but I suppose the small bits of effort will add up eventually.” He slowly pulls back from the counter and picks up his mug, an old thing lined with prints of elephants around its side.

Aeleus stays quiet, simply sipping at his own coffee as Ienzo takes his seat across from him. It’s a few seconds of silence still before he sets the mug down and looks up to meet Ienzo’s eyes. “…you were up worrying,” he says.

Ienzo looks away, gaze sliding to the empty chair beside him for only a moment. “…you say that like it’s a bad thing,” he mutters. “Like you aren’t worried too.” He saw his father pull five mugs from the cabinet this morning.

“I didn’t say that.” Aeleus’s fingers run over the handle of the coffee mug, mindlessly tracing the stem of a painted flower. “Of course I’m worried. All of us are. But I don’t want you losing sleep over this.” He lifts his hand, and it hovers awkwardly for a moment like he can’t decide whether to reach for the coffee or across the table, for Ienzo. He decides on neither and sets it down. “Your father knows what he’s doing.”

Does he _really?_ Ienzo stares into the mug since it’s safer than looking at Aeleus’s face. He gets this look, the slightest knitting of his brow, that’s so _concerned_ in a way Ienzo knows he’ll find annoying right now. “It’s been a week,” he huffs. “By this point, he should have figured things out and come back.”

“He’s never been the most organized,” Aeleus sighs. “He’s probably sifting through his research. That could take him quite a bit of time.”

“Would he really prioritize his research over _us?”_ Vexen would, Ienzo realizes—but Nobody or not, his father is not Vexen. Vexen wouldn’t have put himself on the line for them, wouldn’t have risked his life returning to the depths of his research and helping them overtake the darkness. Even would have—and then Even would have dropped everything else and come _home._

Or at least he should have! Ienzo takes a large gulp of his coffee and it burns his throat. “It shouldn’t be taking him this long,” he says sharply. “He better have good reason for his delay or Light knows, I will—!”

Footsteps out in the hall cut him off and the numbness in his throat almost feels like hope as he looks up. But the man in the doorway is not his father, why should it be, and Ienzo sinks back into his chair. “Good morning, Master Ansem.”

“Good morning, Ienzo, Aeleus.” Ansem moves into the kitchen and takes his seat at the head of the table, immediately reaching for the still steaming mug beside the placemat. “Thank you for the coffee, Aeleus,” he says before he takes a sip. “Always on top of things, I see. Did the two of you rest well?”

“I slept well enough,” says Aeleus. “But Ienzo—”

“I slept fine.” Ienzo brings his coffee mug back to his lips and it mostly obscures the look he gives to Aeleus. Master Ansem doesn’t need to be bothered by whatever worries are keeping him awake. “Woke once or twice. A few confused birds were outside my window before the sun was.”

Ansem hums. “The wildlife here is always so cheerful,” he muses. “I did so miss it. The singing of the birds is such a joy to hear.”

“Not at five a.m. it isn’t,” Ienzo grumbles. Sleep though he did not, his window-side visitors were still unwelcome with their discordant morning screeches.

“Ah, I suppose not.” Ansem hides a chuckle in his next sip of coffee. He lets it linger for a moment before he sets the mug down again. “Did you have a particular plan for our breakfast this morning, Aeleus? I must admit, I was surprised not to find something already cooking.”

Aeleus glances up from his mug. “I was waiting for Dilan,” he says. “When he arrives, we can all contribute ideas for our meal.” That translates to ‘we can all contribute to making the meal, too,’ but Ienzo won’t complain too much, particularly if Dilan is saddled with the majority of the work under guise of being sappy. Ienzo was the one that did the dishes last night, so at the very least Dilan can’t argue being handed that.

“Quite pragmatic of you. Hopefully he shall arrive soon. I am becoming rather hungry.” Ansem folds his hands together on the placemat, as if to further emphasize its emptiness. “Surprising that he is not here yet,” he continues. “I always thought he was the earliest riser out of the four of you.”

“He’s awake,” Aeleus says. “I believe he was taking a morning walk.”

“He never lets those last so long as to miss breakfast,” says Ienzo. Dilan should be back any moment, really—unless his walk was delayed. Again, Ienzo quashes his hope with coffee. If Dilan is running late, it’s almost certainly for the same reason that Ienzo found himself staring at the ceiling for hours on end last night: searching, desperately, for any sign, for any patch to cover the gaping hole that’s been left in the castle walls. He’s run out of caffeine with which to cloud his mind. “I’m getting more coffee,” he sighs, pushing out his chair.

Aeleus lifts an eyebrow. “A full mug already and the stove’s not even been started? Truly you are your father’s son.”

It’s a casual remark, one he’s heard before, but still Ienzo’s grip on the mug handle goes tight. He doesn’t look at Aeleus, doesn’t look at either of them, just stands and moves to the counter.

“Ienzo…” Aeleus’s voice changes like a light switch, soaked in that cloying concern that Ienzo simply cannot _stand_ right now, and he tugs the coffee pot from the machine fast enough to slosh hot liquid over his hand. He hisses and drops it, but any scalding remarks the scalding heat could bring out are stopped by the sound of shouting from down the hall.

“Put me _down!_ You’re being ridi—this is _way_ not cool, Xaldin, I can fucking walk, you know! Don’t, don’t hold her like that, you’re gonna break her with your goddamn spear grip!”

Aeleus stands up, clearly torn between checking on Ienzo’s hand and going out to the hallway to see what’s happening. “Is that…?”

“The voice certainly sounds familiar,” Ansem says. He takes another sip of coffee, looking completely unperturbed by the ruckus outside the kitchen.

Oh, the voice is familiar alright. Ienzo smacks the coffee mug down with a _clink_ that miraculously doesn’t chip it. _“What_ is he doing here?”

There isn’t time for an answer, not that any could be satisfactory. Dilan appears in the doorway, both hands occupied. In one, he holds a tall blue instrument, neck firmly in his grasp. In the other, he’s got a very grumpy looking Demyx, held in place by the hood of his cloak. “This one was skulking about in the castle gardens,” Dilan says, voice flat, like he’s used to carrying around teenagers by their scruffs like unruly cats.

“I was not _skulking!”_ Demyx retorts with the utmost offense in his voice. “I was sitting in a tree! Sleeping, even! That’s the opposite of skulking and clearly did not call for shaking me out with your stupid wind magic!” He wriggles much like an unhappy beetle, trying to get his feet on the ground. “Put me down already! You’ve made your point!”

Aeleus relaxes slightly and takes a step back towards the table, resting a hand on the chair. “We were wondering why you were gone so long, Dilan. Good morning, Demyx.”

“Least someone here has some manners,” Demyx grumbles.

Dilan sets Demyx down and it almost looks as if he gives him a shake by the collar before he lets go. “I didn’t make it five minutes before I found him,” he says. “He was right outside the garden entrance, up in a tree like some kind of annoying monkey.”

Demyx brushes off his cloak and then his hair, dislodging a few leaves. “Hey, nobody told me I wasn’t allowed to climb the damn trees!”

“There are public gardens all around the city,” Dilan says.

“Yeah, and all those trees have little fucking fences around them! Weirdo rich people.”

“Demyx, what are you doing here?” If no one else is going to ask it, Ienzo will. He doesn’t expect to get the answer he wants; he hasn’t this entire week, every time he finds Demyx around the castle, sitar in hand, lounging like nothing’s changed, like he’s just part of the scenery. Ienzo brings a hand to the bridge of his nose, a slight barrier between him and whatever this display in front of him is.

Demyx looks up and the barrier doesn’t do the best job of blocking his eerily golden gaze. “…well, I was trying to take a nap.”

“At this hour, I would more consider that sleeping in,” says Ansem, still happily sipping at his coffee like this is completely normal. Ienzo dreads to imagine what all his master has seen come through these doors.

“I wasn’t there long enough to be full-on sleeping. And definitely not in those trees.” Demyx stretches his arms above his head. “They’re comfy and all, but way not suited for more than a quick snooze, you know?”

“Oh?” Ansem chuckles. “What trees, then, would you consider conducive to proper REM sleep, Demyx?”

This has the potential to become very tedious very quickly. “With all due respect, Master Ansem,” Ienzo says, chiming in before Demyx can do something stupid like ask what REM means, “I don’t believe there’s any need to…hold Demyx up longer than Dilan already has. Demyx, do you need something?” Anything, _any_ concrete reason for him to be here?

Demyx glances behind him at Dilan. “Uh, no, I wasn’t really looking for something in particular,” he says. “Could I have that back? You’re crushing her strings.”

Dilan hands the sitar over. “No weapons at the table,” he huffs, passing Demyx to come and pick up his mug.

“I’m not at the table?”

“You could be,” says Aeleus. “I’m about to start up breakfast, Demyx. Would you be interested in joining us?”

Ienzo turns to Aeleus, mouth open and ready to protest, but the damage is done. In a flash of light, the sitar disappears, and Demyx rubs his hands together. “Oh hell yeah, I am never going to say no to free food. Thanks!”

Dilan rolls his eyes as he slides into his seat. “I do not want to hear any more mocking about me and food motivation,” he says.

“You make it too easy.” Aeleus smiles warmly at him, then turns the smile back to Demyx. “If you would like coffee, mugs are in the cabinet right above the machine. Ienzo can show you.”

Like hell he can! Or at least that’s what Ienzo would like to say, but Aeleus is an annoyingly bright beacon of hospitality and it wouldn’t do well to disappoint him. Ienzo comes up on his toes and tugs the cabinet door open. “Here,” he mutters, stepping aside to reach for the pot and fill his long overdue second cup.

Demyx strolls over, always loping around so casually, and shoots him a grin as he passes. “Thanks!” he says, entirely too cheerful. He reaches in easily with his height and comes back out with a blue mug, writing half-hidden on its far side.

Ienzo sets down the coffee pot harder than he meant to, wasting yet more coffee as it splashes over the edge. “Not that one,” he says, almost a hiss.

“Hm?” Demyx looks up, face innocent and frustratingly clueless. “Something wrong with—?”

“Don’t use that one!” Ienzo reaches without thought and pulls the mug from Demyx’s grip. It comes easily, too easily, and he almost drops it, scrambling in a panic with his other hand to keep it from hitting the counter. The words are mostly covered by shaking fingers, but a few letters peek out, written in a child’s hand: _Best Da—_

“Ienzo!” Aeleus’s voice is sharp and Ienzo knows he’s gone too far. His shoulders go tense, like a scolded child’s, and he stares down into the empty mug and watches it quiver slightly with his hands. “It does not matter—”

“Nah, it’s fine!” There’s absolutely no change in Demyx’s voice, still bright and cheerful without a single blip of hesitation. “I’ll just grab another one, no big deal.” He’s got that same wide grin on his face as he reaches in for another, an innocuously blank red mug this time. His eyes flit up, barely meeting Ienzo’s as he sets the new mug down; but he doesn’t make another comment.

Ienzo’s grip on the mug stays tight, and he waits until Demyx has moved to the coffee pot to carefully stack it back on the cabinet’s bottom shelf. He reaches for his own mug and returns to the table, hair sliding over his face and hiding the majority of his sour look. He can feel Aeleus’s glare on him, but he refuses to look up and acknowledge it.

“Now,” Ansem says, folding his hands together with a serene or perhaps simply clueless smile, “I believe there is breakfast to discuss?”

“Yes,” Aeleus says, “breakfast.” Even has always been the master of sculpting seemingly innocent words into pointed daggers, but clearly he has passed some of his wisdom along to his partner. It hits like carefully chiseled ice and Ienzo further hides his face with his coffee. “I went grocery shopping last night,” Aeleus continues, voice slowly losing its edge as he looks over the rest of the table. “So we have a plethora of options. Is anyone interested in anything in particular?”

“Oh, shoot!” Demyx speaks immediately. He sets the coffee pot back in the machine. “Do you have pancake mix?”

“Demyx—” Ienzo bites back the rest of his comment. He’s said enough; he’s sure Aeleus will pull him aside later, and he should know better than to lengthen his lecture.

He avoids another warning look from his dad and he supposes he made a wise decision. “I did buy pancake batter,” Aeleus says. “I can certainly make pancakes if that’s what everyone wants.”

“Lexaeus,” Demyx says, pressing his hands together, “you are absolutely the best person ever.”

“I concur,” says Ansem with a nod. “I think pancakes sound absolutely delicious, Aeleus.”

“If you bought eggs, I’d like some of those.” It’s a silly question for Dilan to ask—of course they have eggs, Aeleus always buys out the whole grocery store. “I’ll make them while you work on the pancakes.” He stands from his spot just as Demyx sits down at the placemat directly across from him, right next to Ienzo.

It makes Ienzo’s shoulders tense. Where else was Demyx to sit, he tries to reason with himself. There’s no placemat at the other end of the table and even then, sitting across from Master Ansem would be the height of presumption. But Demyx just plops down in a spot that’s not _his_ and Ienzo feels his blood start to boil. “Lex,” his unwelcome neighbor calls, “you happen to have chocolate chips? I would love you forever for some chocolate chips.”

“I think I do,” Aeleus says as he stands as well, pushing in his chair neatly in direct contrast to Dilan’s beside him. “Let me check.”

Chocolate chip pancakes, how unbelievably childish. Ienzo picks up his mug again and stares into it, watching the liquid swirl instead of saying anything else his dad will consider rude. It’s just how Demyx is, just how Demyx has always been. Years and years, all they’ve gone through in Organizations new and old, and he hasn’t changed in the slightest. Ienzo squeezes his fingers around the coffee mug, pressing hard against the warm ceramic. Some of them have actually _matured_ through their experiences, have done things to _fix_ their mistakes! Some of them are actively working to move forward, instead of lounging about in a cursed black garment with cursed gold eyes acting like nothing’s wrong, nothing’s _been_ wrong, everything’s patched back together all fine and normal and not leaking awful, horrible _emptiness_ at the seams!

“Yo, Zex?” A gloved finger snaps in front of his face and all of Ienzo’s breath catches at once, a sharp knot in his throat that blocks a shriek.

“What?” he hisses. “What do you _want?”_

Demyx pulls back, hand drawn to his chest and brows furrowed just enough to fold a single wrinkle across his forehead. “You, uh, you gonna answer the question, or…?”

“What question?” It snaps harsher from his lips than he expected, but Ienzo doesn’t soften his gaze. Demyx is not the one who should be sitting there, looking _concerned._

Aeleus speaks and it’s almost enough to break his focused glare. “I asked if you would like anything in your pancakes, Ienzo,” he says, voice even, almost careful in its words. His brows are also creased, and as Ienzo brings his gaze over the four of them, the look is mirrored, even by Master Ansem. Concern, confusion, as if none of them can see what’s wrong with this distorted, incomplete picture.

Ienzo stands. “No,” he says, “that’s alright. I’m not actually hungry.” He holds his mug in both hands, almost hiding the shaking, and nods with eyes not particularly focused on any one of them. “Please excuse me.”

“Ienzo?” Aeleus sets the frying pan down and takes a step forward.

Ienzo ignores him, moving around the opposite side of the table and not looking back. Hanging around here is only going to make him more and more frustrated and it would be better to focus that energy to something productive. If the rest of his family wants to play about like everything’s normal, that’s their problem. Ienzo is not going to stop working until his father is home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's taken a while to update. Y'all know how the world is right now. Hopefully it won't be much longer for the next chapter :P


	3. in which demyx isn't eavesdropping

This castle is nowhere near as large as the one on the World That Never Was. It makes more sense by far, no twisted hallways leading to nowhere, no fading staircases whose paths shift without warning. There is light through the windows, a sense of space, of groundedness, whereas the Castle That Never Was always seemed detached, like it was simply floating through oblivion. Compared to the complexity of their old base, the palace of Ansem the Wise is more of a dollhouse than a castle.

So how the fuck does Demyx keep getting lost?

“Everything looks the fucking same here,” he mutters, tapping his knuckles against the wall of yet another goddamn hallway. This is at least the third one he’s walked to find absolutely nothing at the end, nothing but bookcases and huge windows to the gardens and tons and tons of paintings. He’s yet to catch sight of a single staircase in his wandering and he’s beginning to wonder if they actually exist, or if perhaps there’s a secret teleporter system installed here, as stairs are clearly an archaic invention that merely holds them hostage to the past.

He can hear it in Vexen’s voice and Demyx snorts, stopping as he approaches an intersection that he’s crossed at least twice. He supposes he does have his own secret teleporter system in the form of the dark corridors; but he can see the dirty looks he’s given as he steps out of the portal, can see hands dropped hastily from weapons once it becomes clear who he is, and so he’s been trying to cut down on the corridor usage. Sure, wandering aimlessly like a normal person is incredibly time-consuming, but sometimes the journey is half the entertainment, right?

Alright, not when he’s got fifteen different classically painted portraits staring down at him, it’s not. If the Castle That Never Was had one thing over this place, it’s that Xemnas never cared much for the trappings of nobility. “He’s a _scientist!”_ Demyx turns and shouts it at the nearest painting of Ansem the Wise, a looming figure framed in gold. “How many goddamn pictures of himself does he need?” Fucking, rich people. He’d say he couldn’t believe that nearly half their old group came from a place as posh as this, but that’d be a complete lie, because he knows their personalities and this makes entirely too much sense. Honestly, it’s enough that being here, surrounded by them in their natural environment, is almost sickening; except that Lexeaus actually seems shockingly nice as a Somebody and Vexen at least has a weird sense of humor to share whenever he makes it back.

And then there’s Zexion, or Ienzo as he strictly insists every time Demyx slips with it. Zexion’s an interesting case. Zexion tries incredibly hard to act all prim and proper, a true prince or whatever the hell this castle’s equivalent is, but it cracks so easily under the slightest bit of pressure. His words become quicker, harsher, snarky even. It reminds Demyx a lot of Vexen, whose posh and snobbish tone quickly revealed itself to be a cover act. Vexen turned out to be halfway interesting beneath it; maybe Zexion could be, too.

But if he’s asked, Demyx spends much of his time in the lab solely because the ceilings provide the best acoustics.

That, and out of the four people here, Zexion is probably the safest to even attempt playing his music around. He gets annoyed, sure, as everyone does, but so far it’s had the fewest consequences. Demyx can tell that Lexaeus is the only thing keeping him from being thrown out a window sometimes, so it’d be pretty damn stupid to piss him off; Xaldin reaches ‘annoyed’ with him faster than anyone besides maybe Larxene and then jumps to ‘I will not hesitate to use wind magic and physically remove you from my presence’ shortly thereafter; and Ansem, Ansem seems nice enough, but he carries an air of authority that Demyx finds unsavorily familiar, and so he prefers to keep his conversations with the man short and only on the most banal of topics. All Zexion has done is snap at him a couple times before going back to whatever it is he’s working on. Demyx can handle a few shitty comments; he’s been dealing with those since before the first Organization, after all.

He’s about halfway down the fourth or possibly fifth hallway of leering portraits when he spots them—stairs, leading to a lower floor, like a mirage across the desert. Demyx honestly expects them to disappear as he approaches, like a hallucination conjured from his own desperate imagination, but the stairwell stays solid and maybe the Light has taken pity on him after all. “Or maybe,” he says aloud, “they have a second fucking murder lab here, and today’s about to get a lot more interesting.” As far as he’s aware, the only murder lab down there spans the castle’s entire basement level and has fully completed its de-murdering transformation; but he’s never been a lucky guy and stumbling into a subterranean chasm filled with rogue Heartless seems exactly like the type of thing the worlds would pull with him, just to be funny.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, though, and with one hand on the railing, Demyx starts his descent.

The stairwell is innocuous enough. Everything is metal, from the walls to the stairs themselves. The ornately designed lamps from the floors above have been forgone in favor of simply fluorescent lights set into the ceiling, which keep the stairway incredibly bright. Overall, that should be a point in favor of a normal, non-murderous lab at the bottom; but as Demyx keeps going, deeper down to where the stairs end and meet a narrow linoleum corridor, a feeling of discomfort begins to bubble in his gut. His footsteps echo around him and it brings attention to how quiet everything is. Not even the buzzing of the lights is enough to pull his mind from it. Demyx has always been too quick to notice silence; it’s too loud, deafening even. It presses hard against his ears here in the cold, metal hall and Demyx instinctively brings a hand to the bridge of his nose to try to head off the nausea he can feel crawling up his throat. _Something_ is here, hiding behind the silence. Whatever wrongs were done here may have ceased, but that doesn’t stop long dead shadows from trying to pry their way out of the tiles.

Vexen never specified the details of what he was atoning _for,_ and Demyx isn’t sure if that’s made things better or worse.

But a murmured voice catches his ear as he makes the next turn and even one added noise is enough to flood him with relief. Demyx picks up his pace, footsteps lighter with an end goal in view. Zexion is always muttering to himself while he fiddles with things and at this point it’d take a lot of muffling to keep Demyx from recognizing it.

So, with a bit more confidence, Demyx continues down the hall towards the entrance to the lab. He debates with himself the pros and cons of announcing his presence. It’s always a delicate dance with Zexion; too annoying if he says hello, too rude if he doesn’t. Maybe this time, he’ll forgo the actual words and just try a wave. It’s at least _acknowledgment_ that he’s encroaching on sacred work space, but it should delay any accusations of purposefully being a distraction until he brings out Arpeggio. Okay, that seems like a fine enough plan: catch Zexion’s eye, wave, and only speak if he’s spoken to. Right, Demyx thinks with a scoff. He sure does have a lot of practice with that.

He comes to what sounds like the last turn and that’s when another voice joins Zexion’s. Demyx stops, one hand on the wall. It’s only a tad deeper than Zexion’s, someone still young, and it’s almost familiar—not in a way that Demyx could pick out in a crowd, more like something he _should_ know but can’t quite get his brain to remember.

“You did it with Roxas, Ienzo. Is this really going to be that much harder?”

“I had a blueprint with Roxas. There was a full digital copy of him sitting there in Master Ansem’s computer. This—this is building a person entirely from scratch!”

Demyx creeps silently forward until he can peer through the doorway while still remaining mostly hidden in the hall. Zexion is at the main console, his constant position any time he’s in the lab. It’s a wonder the metal in front of it hasn’t bent from the consistent pressure. There’s a boy next to him, a bit taller, with short silver hair and a serious look. It takes only a second for the memory to return—this is Riku, the Keyblade Master, the consistent thorn in the new Organization’s side second only to Sora himself. This is the kid who tried to stab him with a blunt object before he could get two words out, just because he was wearing the leather darkness snuggie. Demyx pulls at the edge of his t-shirt, rubbing the bright fabric between his fingertips. Maybe he’ll just stay here a moment.

The conversation seems too important for him to interrupt, anyway. “We do have some of Naminé’s data,” Riku, “in Jiminy’s journal. She used it while she was putting back Sora’s memories, after all, and when Mickey used it as a datascape, he found traces of her involvement. The entire journal was uploaded to the gummiphones—can’t we use that?”

“If all the data we have fits in that journal app on my smartphone, then Riku, we might as well be building from scratch.” Demyx can’t clearly see Zexion’s face from here, but the tone is more than enough to convey the look Riku’s being given. “With Roxas, we had an advanced hard drive’s worth of data from the virtual Twilight Town. I mean no disrespect, but Master Ansem’s data is some of the most sophisticated in all the worlds. We had what was, by all rights, a perfect copy of Roxas, everything but his heart—and it still took us weeks to recreate him! And even then, the circumstances surrounding the return of his heart were completely out of our control!” Zexion exhales hard, bringing his hand up to his chin and masking more of his face. “I won’t turn away any of the data you can give me, Riku,” he says at last, “but…with so little to go on, I don’t know that I can promise you anything.”

He moves to the now-repaired table, set just off the central platform. The replica Demyx brought two weeks ago is lying there, still in the Organization cloak, still utterly lifeless. Of course—despite Zexion’s unwillingness to tell him anything about his delivery, _someone_ belongs in that replica. ‘No one you’d know anyway,’ he said. Does that matter? Demyx slides a little closer, trying to sneak a look as Zexion pulls at the replica’s hood. He’s _curious,_ dammit! So far everyone seems to have forgotten that he’s the reason the thing is here in the first place, that any of the replicas made their way here. He deserves at least a little information, and if Zexion doesn’t want to give it to him, he’ll figure it out himself!

A hand grabs at his shoulder and yanks him backwards, and Demyx contains his scream only because he chokes on it, devolving into a coughing fit instead.

“Eavesdropping, I see?”

Fighting to keep his heart from flying up his esophagus, Demyx pulls himself free with great effort—Xaldin’s is not an easy grip to break. “What the—what the fuck, dude?” he spits between gasps for air. “You trying to, to fucking give me a heart attack?”

“If only we’d be so lucky,” Xaldin sighs. He steps back, crossing his arms like he’s trying to be intimidating. It is, admittedly, a little bit intimidating; hurling spears around has given him rather well-toned muscles.

Demyx firms his chin and doesn’t back down. He brushes the rich person cooties off his shoulder and then shoves both hands on his hips. “What are you doing here?” he huffs.

“Checking on Ienzo,” Xaldin nods to the lab behind them. “What are _you_ doing here, Demyx?”

Demyx coughs once more and finally has most of his breath back. “I was doing the same thing,” he says.

“Mhm. And you were peering around the corner like an antsy stray cat because—?”

“I didn’t want to interrupt them!” Though Demyx is sure they’ve been plenty interrupted now. Neither he nor Xaldin are ones for subtlety. But no one’s come after them; either Zexion thinks Xaldin has it handled or finds neither of them worth his time. Both are equally likely.

“Demyx.” He looks back, and while Xaldin isn’t exactly glaring at him, his eyes are not incredibly kind. “Why are you still hanging around? Do you really not have anything better to do?”

“Come on, Xaldin, you know me. When do I ever have anything better to do?”

“I remember you mentioning a nap as your topmost priority any time Saïx assigned you a job.” He lifts a perfectly manicured eyebrow and Demyx wonders if he gets them done professionally or if he puts the work in himself. “I figured that, without any other responsibilities, you’d spend all your time doing that.”

“I tried,” Demyx says, “and you flung me out of a tree.”

Xaldin makes a short humming noise almost certainly meant to mock him. “But why here, at the palace? Even isn’t giving you any more work, yes?”

“Haven’t heard from him since before the old man got offed,” Demyx says with a shrug.

Xaldin’s eyebrows furrow, and for a moment, his eyes flit away, towards the entrance to the lab. But he looks back again before Demyx has time to actually analyze his face. “Precisely. So why stay here?”

Why stay here? It’s not a question Demyx has asked himself. He didn’t make any sort of conscious decision to stay; he’s just here, he’s been here off and on for months now since this whole business started, so he’s just…stuck around. “Where else would I go?” he asks, after a longer silence than he intended. He looks up, farther than should really be necessary, to meet Xaldin’s eyes. Demyx still finds it hard to process that Lexeaus is even taller. “Back to the graveyard? Yeah, major pass. That place gives me the mega creeps and it’s way too dusty anyway.”

Xaldin rolls his eyes. “Surely you have somewhere to go besides the Keyblade Graveyard. Xemnas had to snatch you from somewhere before he shoved you into that organization of fools, yes? Across all these worlds, we all had homes to return to.”

_The crash of ocean waves, the smell of saltwater permeating the wood of the docks. Boisterous voices through narrow alleys, callers leaning from their stalls, laughter and singing echoing from the tavern windows. And then sharp, callous eyes, gloved hands that grabbed him, ripped him away._

Demyx reaches automatically to pull his hood up, pausing only when he realizes the cloak isn’t there. He drops his hands and his eyes as well. “…no,” he says. He moves past Xaldin without looking at him, starting down the hall. “Not all of us.”

For a moment, it seems that Xaldin has gotten the hint. Demyx gets almost entirely down the hall in silence; but just as he starts to turn the corner, footsteps echo behind him. “Demyx?”

Demyx only looks over his shoulder. He locks eyes with Xaldin and the guard stops. “What?”

“…how old are you, Demyx?” Xaldin asks.

_Too old for this shit,_ is what he wants to say. But Demyx is nice. He politely turns around again. “That sure is a loaded question,” he starts. “You want me to add in those eight years sitting around in the castle, or—?”

“No,” Xaldin says, “how old are you?”

Why the hell does Xaldin want to know? Demyx rolls his eyes, but he supposes if it gets Xaldin off his back and him out of this conversation, fuck it. “Nineteen,” he says, “ _way_ too young for you.” And since Xaldin is clearly having trouble with subtext today, he adds, “I’m leaving, since Zex is busy. Gonna go to those public gardens or whatever, free the trees. Later.” He moves before Xaldin can say anything else, trap him in more meaningless questions. Demyx gets halfway down the next hall and stops, lifting a hand in front of him. The air ripples, then tears like a loose seam, revealing the darkness underneath.

Surely he has somewhere to go. He thinks it with a scoff as he moves through the doorway of pulsating shadow. _Somewhere._ He may as well be from nothing, from the very oblivion into which he’s stepping. Nothing he’s ever done has proven any different.

The darkness sounds like the shifting tide as it closes around him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting this earlier than I should because I'm trying to keep a chapter ahead but fuck it! Zemyx Day!
> 
> I rewrote a lot of this from the original that was done in mid-2019, and it really shocks me how much my Dilan writing has changed. Like, obviously from Demyx's perspective 'Xaldin' is going to seem a lot harsher, but I wrote him.....REALLY mean in my original, I feel.  
> Now he's my favorite character of the whole Radiant Garden group. Whoops.
> 
> But anyway! Here begins the start of "Sam bullshits how creating replicas actually works" and it only gets worse in the chapters to come. I'm very sorry. But also you can't stop me.


	4. in which ienzo tries to code

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _alternate title: in which sam bullshits a lot about replicas_

Fifty lines of code.

Ienzo scrolls through the data again, as if that could miraculously make more appear. He knew, they all knew going in that there wasn’t going to be much; Naminé’s presence in the journal was nothing but fragments, trace remnants of her involvement as she sifted through Sora’s memories. But fifty lines—he might as well be working with a blindfold on.

He minimizes the window with Jiminy’s journal data and looks to his own document, where the copy and pasted code sits mocking him with its blankness. Ienzo sighs and taps his fingers against the main console. Somehow, he is supposed to create an entire human person from fifty measly lines of code.

Nonsense. Ienzo shoves a hand through his hair and looks behind him, to the replica on the table. It’s still wrapped in its black Organization cloak, as if revealing the blank canvas underneath would somehow be indecent. He shakes his head—a lifeless body laid across a table should not be a sight he’s getting used to. “What am I going to do with you?” he sighs. “It’s no use directly downloading the code. What will it do, shift the shape of your face? Even that may be too dramatic.” The featureless mien of the replica offers him no answers.

He turns back to the monitor. Surprisingly enough, a thousand more lines of code have not spontaneously materialized in his document while he was looking away. Ienzo pulls up the main program, a 3D model of the blank replica, and sets it beside the document so he can see both at once. He supposes that all he can do is get started.

He doesn’t have a single clue what he’s doing.

Ienzo slides to the keyboard and taps one line of code into the program, copying each digit meticulously by hand. “What do you represent?” he mumbles. “The length of one finger? A single eyelash?” He finishes the line and imports it to the model.

Nothing visibly changes and Ienzo shifts through layers, free hand resting against his chin as he looks. He fingers tap and undo, redo, undo, and he watches for any change, and blip of difference in his vision. Something finally shifts on the skeletal layer, and Ienzo zooms in on the model.

“Aha,” he says, turning back to look at the replica. “That one controls the length of one of your vertebrae.”

The replica seems thoroughly unimpressed with this information, and Ienzo can’t really blame it. He looks at the program again and rubs under his eyes. “This is a disaster,” he mutters. “Does every line of code really control that level of minutia?” He didn’t have to deal with this with Roxas: Roxas came ready-made, an already packaged bundle of code copied straight from the source. “Perhaps I could borrow something from his code,” Ienzo continues, “but it will still be trial and error, determining which lines of code relate to which physical features. And what physical traits could I even copy over?” Ienzo reaches for the drawing he was given, sketched and colored from memory in Riku’s careful hand.

“…gee,” he says flatly, “guess I’m all set on blue eyes.”

He sets the paper back down and rests both his hands on the lip of the control panel, rocking back on his heels. He needs to open Roxas’s file, fiddle with the data, copy and paste the proper bits of code, line them up with Naminé's model… It’s going to be so much work.

“And it’s not my work to do!” Ienzo drops back down with a _clack._ He’s not the one that codes replicas! He hasn’t done the proper research for this level of replication, all the way down to the building blocks for the body itself. And the person that has, that has done this before, that is by all means the only expert to exist in this field, is still off gallivanting about doing Light knows what and refusing to bring his sorry ass _home!_

Ienzo slowly loosens his grip on the control panel, revealing imprints of the edge in his palms. He brings both hands to his face, rests his fingers on the bridge of his nose. “Why?” he asks softly. His eyes slide over the monitor, full of numbers and digits and figures he should not be dealing with alone. “Why haven’t you come back to us?”

“Ah, shit!”

Ienzo jumps, just barely grabbing the console again so that he doesn’t fall over. One hand on his chest, he spins around to look for the intruder. The room is empty—sans one chair in front of some old equipment, where Demyx is bent over his instrument and fiddling with the strings.

“Damn thing,” he huffs. “Knew something was up with that knob, but I didn’t think it was _that_ loose…”

Ienzo lets out all his breath at once. He tries to count; one, two, three, six— “Demyx!” It’s not quite a shout, but it’s not the cool, collected tone he was aiming for. “What the hell are you doing?”

Demyx’s head snaps up, and something small and yellow drops from his hands. “What—what am I doing? What am I doing?” He looks around, as if he’s truly unsure what the fuck he’s doing, then jolts to a stop and reaches to grab something from the floor before it rolls under his chair.

“Yes, what are you doing? What are you doing here again?” Ienzo’s heart rate has dropped a bit, but his face is still red and his glare is sharp.

“Playing…music?” Demyx lifts an eyebrow, carefully pulling at the now-loose string. “I mean, I gotta fix this now, the whole damn knob popped out, but…”

“Could you play it _anywhere else?”_ Ienzo brings his hand up from his chest and threads his fingers through his hair instead. It’s thick and his face gets hot so easily. “It’s really distracting.”

Demyx stares at him, silent for a moment. “…I’ve been playing for over an hour,” he says. “I said hi to you when I walked in.”

Well. There’s not really a response he can give that won’t leave him looking like a fool, is there? Ienzo leaves his hand in his hair as he thinks. “…yes,” he says slowly. “Right, you did.” Demyx looks entirely unconvinced, and so Ienzo quickly moves on. “The weather’s nice today, isn’t it? Why don’t you—I don’t know, play outside?”

It sounds stupid leaving his mouth, and from Demyx’s face, he thinks so too. “The sound is better inside,” he says. “And besides, Lexaeus and Xaldin are out working in the gardens today and I don’t need stray fertilizer in Arpeggio’s strings.”

There’s no winning if Ienzo continues this conversation thread; but fortunately, Demyx hands him another, one he’s been meaning to follow for a while now. “Could you stop calling them that?”

Demyx looks up almost blankly. “Huh?”

_Idiot._ Ienzo pinches the bridge of his nose. “Lexaeus, Xaldin—those aren’t their names. We’ve talked about this, you even manage to get mine right upon occasion. Stop, stop using the wrong ones for Dilan and Aeleus.” There’s too much tied up in them, too many years of darkness, of emotionless toil, of looking into the faces of people he loved and feeling _nothing_ —of knowing they felt nothing, too.

Demyx stares at him with vacant gold eyes and Ienzo can’t shake the feeling that whatever he’s planning to say next is going to test him. “…right,” he decides on. “Yeah, Aeleus, Dilan, Ienzo. It’s just, it’s kinda weird, you know?”

“What,” Ienzo snaps back, “my _name?”_

Demyx sets the sitar down, missing knob pushed loosely back into place. “No,” he says, “me using your name. Like, eight years and change, I literally only knew you as Zexion.”

“You had to know we had other names. Xemnas gifted you one, too.”

“Okay, yeah, I’m not actually as dumb as you all think I am.” Demyx rolls his eyes. “But I didn’t _know_ your names. I didn’t know anyone’s names. I just—” He waves a hand. “I just don’t see the point of switching it up now, after so long. Why does it make a difference which names I use?”

“Because,” Ienzo says, and it comes out as a hiss, “I am no longer _Zexion.”_ Even saying the name is enough to bring the taste of shadows to his lips, to transport him back to a darker basement, different experiments. “I’m not Zexion,” he says, softer this time. “They’re not Xaldin and Lexaeus. Don’t—don’t use those names. Please.”

He meets Demyx’s eyes and, for once, they lack their usual levity. Demyx almost looks serious. “…got it,” he says, after a long moment of silence. “Dilan. Aeleus. Ienzo. Just…don’t freak out if I slip up a couple times, okay? That’s eight whole years I’ve gotta relearn.”

Ienzo sighs, tension visibly leaving his shoulders. He turns back to the monitor and rests his hands on the keyboard. “I supposed that is understandable. So long as you are making an effort. I know your relationship with that word is hazy at best.”

“Ha ha.”

Ienzo rolls his eyes. Really, he should be getting back to work; Demyx always proves himself to be too time-consuming a distraction. He gets Roxas’s data-map open, tapping his fingers lightly over the keys as it loads. And yet… “I suppose it’s only polite,” he starts, glancing back over his shoulder, “to offer to use your real name as well. You are just as free from the Organization as I am, after all.” Even if his eyes beg to differ.

Demyx picks up his sitar and banishes it before he looks up again. He holds Ienzo’s gaze for a few beats of silence, eyes still serious, lips pressed together. “…nah,” he says at last, “I’m good.”

“You’re _good?”_ Ienzo looks him up and down, but there’s no indication that Demyx is joking, even as his face drops some of its more solemn features and returns to its normal, too-relaxed look. “What? Does it truly not bother you?”

Demyx shrugs. “Like I said, I don’t see what difference it makes. It’s just a name.”

“It’s not _your_ name, though!” The data-map opens behind him, but Ienzo ignores it for now. “It’s just—it’s a jumble of letters, something Xemnas made up to remove you from your identity!” To remove all of them from their identities, to void them of any attachment to their old personalities, their old hearts. They were always meant to be empty vessels; even if the plan didn’t succeed, the echo of that awful mark, the recusant’s sigil shoved into the very letters of their names, is a bitter taste too painful to remember.

“Dude,” Demyx says, “it’s not that deep. I really don’t care.”

He seems so lax about it, like it really doesn’t matter to him at all. Ienzo frowns. “Are you truly that content to use a name that someone else has given you?”

“Is that not how most names work?”

Fuck. Ienzo turns back to the monitor. He needs to end this conversation. “Fine,” he mutters, _“Demyx_ it is.” There’s no point in arguing it any further, even if it baffles Ienzo that Demyx would want to leave something so integral to a man’s evilness intact in his life, wouldn’t care enough to work to remove it. The gold of his eyes, still bright even in the dim lighting of the lab—that’s even more integral, even more baffling. Clearly, it’s a waste of effort to try to understand what goes through Demyx’s mind.

If anything does, Ienzo thinks with a scoff. He brings his attention to the program in front of him, to Roxas and the lines upon lines of code that make up his model. It’s a daunting task ahead of him, but it can only get less daunting as he starts. Right? He pulls a notepad closer into his reach, then picks up Riku’s sketch again and compares it to the 3D image on the screen. Eyes he can transfer over, the color if not the exact shape. Hair—they’re two different shades of blonde, so that won’t work, but perhaps the texture… Ienzo taps at his chin, then reaches and scribbles that down. He scrolls through the code, as if the letters and numbers hold any real meaning for him; maybe it’s just to give his hands something to do as he thinks. He can’t transfer skin tone, Roxas is quite a bit darker than Naminé is, but he can probably get away with copying the skin structure… Ienzo lets out a slow huff of air. And how is he to go about finding that structure in the first place? There’s no categorization to Roxas’s code, a chunk of raw data that Ansem scanned and didn’t bother to work with. This is going to be a process of elimination, of trial and error, and it’s going to take _forever._

“…so…Ienzo.”

The voice behind him is much closer than before and Ienzo’s shoulders go up to his ears. He waits until he’s breathing a bit more calmly to turn to his right, where Demyx is looking at him from the next level down. The main console is only a few steps up from the ground and from this perspective, they’re about the same height. “…yes?” Ienzo asks, impressed at himself for not snapping it.

Demyx rocks on his heels, hands clasped behind his back. “I was just thinking,” he says. “The new replica’s been here a while. Am I allowed to know who’s going in it now?”

Ienzo frowns. “You were never not allowed,” he says.

“Mm.” Demyx doesn’t look at him, eyes on the cloaked replica instead. He takes a step towards it, but his hands stay behind his back as he looks it over. Finally, his eyes flit back up to the main console. “You’ve got Roxas on that screen,” he says. “I thought Roxas’s replica turned up, with him in it. You’re not actually making a second him, right?”

“No,” Ienzo grumbles, “I am not making a second Roxas. I’m simply using his model as a template for the model I am currently making. This replica is for Naminé.”

“Right.” Demyx looks at him blankly. “And, am I supposed to know who that is?”

Ienzo sighs and flips to the blank model. No, he supposes not. “When Sora was turned into a Heartless,” he begins, “two hearts were released from his body. One was his own. That release caused Roxas’s existence, obviously. The other heart was Kairi’s, which had been taking shelter with Sora’s when it was torn from her.” Ienzo meets Demyx’s eyes to make sure he’s following along; so far, he doesn’t look any more baffled than usual. “A Nobody was born from the release of that heart, too. Kairi’s heart, and Sora’s body—it created Naminé. As her creation was atypical, a Nobody born of two people instead of just one, she had powers unlike those of any other Nobody in existence. She was able to reach into the memories of Sora, and by extension the memories of those hearts touched by Sora, and manipulate them.” Ienzo brings his gaze back to the model, empty as the body on the table. “I never met her,” he says, “but she was there with us, in Castle Oblivion, when we were sent to investigate it. Marluxia found her and was using her, against her will, to change Sora’s memories and further their plans to take over the Organization.”

He gives Demyx a moment to process this, as he’s sure it’s needed. Demyx’s eyes are back to the replica, frowning. “So after Castle Oblivion,” he asks, “where did she go?”

“Somehow, she returned to Kairi’s heart. I assume it was the stronger connection with the heart over the body, that brought her to Kairi instead of Sora.” Ienzo flips the next line of code on and off again until he locates the section of the model it controls, a portion of muscle on the left cheek. “Unfortunately,” he sighs, “this is where it becomes complicated. Master Ansem did not make a scan of Naminé in the time they worked together, and Kairi is no longer with us, so we cannot construct a scan from her heart. I’m building Naminé’s replica from a few lines of code and a picture Riku drew for me. That’s it.”

Demyx whistles, shoving some of the hair out of his face. “Sounds like a hell of a lotta work to me.”

Ienzo’s honestly surprised Demyx recognizes it. He flicks through more code without any real attention. “Yes, it is,” he says, “which is why I’m planning to use as much of Roxas’s code as possible to create this model. But Roxas’s data is an uncategorized mess, and it’s not in a coding language I’m very familiar with, so at the moment I’m basically throwing darts at the wall, trying to figure out which bit of numbers controls what.”

“Engaging,” Demyx drawls, stepping up to the main platform and leaning over the console. His arms stay away from the keys so Ienzo allows it, for now. “Can’t you get your grandpa to help out? You said he’s the one who made that whole, simulation thing, where you nabbed Roxas from, right?”

“My—Master Ansem?” Ienzo lifts an eyebrow, the one not hidden behind his hair. “Master Ansem is busy helping with the restoration efforts, I’m not going to pull him from that. And…well, to be honest, he can’t actually code. He created his copy of Twilight Town from scans and map data. Nothing in the simulation was actually hand-coded.” He brings a hand to the back of his neck, rubbing away some of the growing tension. “The scanning device he used wasn’t even his invention.”

Demyx doesn’t even look that surprised. “Yeah?” he asks. “Who made that, then?”

“Even, of course. Even has always been the most proficient of us when it comes to technology.” Ienzo drops his hand and it clenches around the edge of the console. “He’s a coding genius,” he says, voice softening. “Most all of his projects involved complex coding in some shape or form. Even his less sophisticated replicas were nearly perfect, capable of developing their own emotions and identities. If he would—if he was here, this would be easy for him.” He squeezes the metal, warm from the system’s processes, and stares forward until the monitor’s image goes blurry. “Instead, I’m stuck doing this on my own.”

Silence. It starts to seep into Ienzo’s shoulders and that’s when he sees the shift in his peripheral vision. Demyx is moving, stepping off the main platform again. It’s still quiet, like Demyx is hesitating before finally deciding to speak. “It’s weird,” he says. “He talked about you a lot.”

“What?” Ienzo turns, muscles immediately tensed again. He looks up, but Demyx isn’t looking at him.

“Vexen. Even?”

“Even,” Ienzo says carefully.

Demyx nods. “Right, yeah. Even talked about you guys nonstop. Like, it was hard to get him to shut up sometimes. I’d be trying to leave with the delivery he was sending and instead he’d rope me into some tangent on something he and Lexae—sorry, he and Aeleus did one time when you were a kid, or, uh, Dilan’s gardening projects and just on and on and _on!_ It’d never stop!” He throws up a hand in front of him, face still turned slightly from Ienzo’s gaze. “Fucker would keep me there for hours, I swear. He really cares about you guys. Is he bad at directions?”

Ienzo’s mouth feels fuzzy, stuck together like velcro. “What?”

“Is your dad bad at directions?” Demyx asks again. “I stopped by the lab the other day, his lab, the one he basically dug out in the graveyard. Place was totally barren. Not even a single note left, and let me tell you, that shit was always all over the floor—”

“When was that?” Ienzo fights past the clench in his chest to speak and it comes out a bit harshly. “When, when were you there, Demyx?”

Demyx finally looks up at him again, strands of golden hair falling in front of golden eyes. “Um…it was, uh, a couple days ago, I think? Whatever day it was that Lex made that awesome curry, I remember coming back to that.”

Right, Demyx opened the dark corridor right in the middle of the fucking kitchen, gave all four of them a heart attack. Ienzo remembers as well. “That—that was the beginning of this week! That was five whole days ago!” His fist connects with the control panel, missing the keyboard by an inch. “If he’s not mucking about in his lab, where is he, and why isn’t he _home?”_

Demyx takes a step back from the platform with both hands raised slightly in front of him. “Look, I dunno, Ienzo.” There’s another pause, quiet tension, and Ienzo almost speaks before Demyx beats him to it. “That’s why I asked about the directions. Maybe he’s just fucking lost. I ever tell you about the time I tried to open a portal down to the city, back in the World That Never Was, and I ended up in Xigbar’s bathroom?”

It’s back to his light, jovial tone, like this is fine, it’s nothing concerning, there’s nothing wrong with the fact that his father’s been gone for weeks without a trace of his presence. At this point, Ienzo honestly lacks the energy to get that upset. Slowly, he uncurls his fingers. “No, Demyx,” he sighs, “you did not.”

“Hilarious story, remind me to get into it sometime.” Demyx turns fully away again, lifts a hand. “But I’m gonna stop distracting you,” he says. “You’ve got work to do, and I’ve probably gotta track down some kind of wrench to get Arpeggio fixed up, see if, uh—Dilan has one, he was fixing up the fountains yesterday. Good luck with the people-building and, stuff, Ienzo.” He’s already to the doorway, moving into the hall.

“Oh, um…see you soon, Demyx.” Ienzo lifts his hand to wave, but in just those few seconds, Demyx is around the corner and out of sight. He frowns and sets his hand down again. “Odd,” he mumbles, because it’s the only word he can really pick to describe this interaction with Demyx. For once, ‘annoying’ doesn’t entirely apply.

But Demyx is right; he does have work to do, and quite a lot of it at that. Ienzo taps the dimming monitor back to life and returns to Naminé’s empty model, a towering mountain that he must face alone but that he will indeed face. Line by line, piece by tiny piece, he’ll figure out how to do this.

It’s not very long into his work that he notices just how unnaturally silent the lab has become.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If Nomura has better notes on how exactly replicas work, I don't want to hear them.


	5. in which demyx gets takeout

Demyx thinks he’s been getting a lot better about navigating without the corridors. Ansem’s palace is still a fucking maze, but Demyx has been in and out and all through it and he’s starting to get a sense for the layout. Not a great sense, mind you—he still gets lost, and frequently at that, but it’s _less_ frequent than it was before and that’s progress! And even when he does get lost, he gets himself unlost fairly easily, off down a familiar hallway with ever-so-slowly dwindling chances of becoming lost again. He always gets where he’s going eventually; it’s just a matter of the time it takes.

He doesn’t really have a lot of time right now, so dark corridor it is.

Demyx keeps the hood of his jacket up as he slips through the darkness. It doesn’t offer the same protection as the cloak, but it does make him feel better, keeps the shadows off his face even for a trip as short as this. He pushes through the tear at the end of the corridor and already has a hand up to tug it off. The other clutches tightly at his prize, hard-earned with a good four hours of playing music for munny in the square. “Ienzo!” he calls, stepping into the lab. “Hey, you—busy?”

For once, Ienzo isn’t at the main console. The person there is much larger, isn’t wearing a lab coat, and has a mop in his hands that’s being pointed towards Demyx much like a weapon. They meet eyes, and the mop handle lowers. “Light above, Demyx, you scared me!”

Lexaeus—no, Aeleus, he corrects himself with a mental slap on the wrist—could definitely kill him with a mop, and so Demyx is glad when it’s put down before it finds its way through his chest. He lifts both hands in front of him, paper bag dangling from the one. “Sorry,” he says quickly. “I didn’t think you’d be down here. Ienzo’s kinda used to it, I guess, so I wasn’t really thinking, about the whole…portal thing.” He’s quickly falling into rambling and Demyx forces himself to shut up and actually close the corridor behind him. That done, he looks up at Aeleus again. “…where is Ienzo, anyway?”

“Resting,” Aeleus says. He sets the mop down in its nearby bucket and takes a step closer to Demyx. “You were looking for him?”

Demyx lifts the bag higher. “I got takeout,” he says. “Came right over cuz I didn’t want it to get cold. Wedge-cut fries are great, but they’re a bitch to reheat, you know?” He sets the bag down on the closest counter, pushing some papers aside so that he doesn’t get grease on any of Ienzo’s notes.

“I do know,” Aeleus says. “We rarely order them because there’s always leftovers that end up getting thrown out. You got them for Ienzo?”

Demyx rips the bag open and pulls out one styrofoam container, then another. “I mean, I’d feel bad getting french fries and then coming here and snacking on them in front of Ienzo, so I just got two. He seems to get excited on pizza nights so I figured he wouldn’t have any kind of problem with junk food.”

“You figured correctly.” Aeleus comes up to the counter but still leaves a good couple feet between the two of them. He starts to organize the mess of papers, tapping them together into piles. “He’ll be upset he missed them, but they’ll definitely be cold by the time he wakes up.”

“Rushed for nothing,” Demyx sighs. He grabs one of the stools from under the counter with his ankle and yanks it out to sit. He pops open his container of fries and tosses two into his mouth before he speaks again. “I didn’t realize Ienzo slept.”

Aeleus pauses his tapping, glancing at Demyx from the corner of his eye. Something about it seems harder for a moment, closer to the face he wore as a Nobody, but it vanishes just as quickly as he reaches for a pile of notebooks to straighten. “You know,” he says, “I’m not sure he entirely realizes he needs to sleep, either.”

“Yeah, seems right,” Demyx says, but he’s more cautious this time, watching Aeleus’s eyes as he continues to speak. “By this point, his blood stream’s gotta be at least eighty percent coffee.”

“I swear, the only reason I see him some days is because we haven’t installed a coffee machine down here,” Aeleus grumbles. He sets the notebooks down and has now cleared a significant space on the counter. He stares down at it, quiet, and for a second Demyx wonders if maybe he needs some sleep himself; but then he speaks again. “He did not go to bed,” he says. “I found him passed out here and carried him upstairs myself.”

Demyx lifts an eyebrow, shoving another fry into his mouth. “On the computer?” he asks.

“Under the replica table, actually.” Aeleus tents his hands over his nose and leans his elbows on the counter. “Next to a half-spilled mug of coffee that did not want to do its job today. I should be grateful he’s getting any rest at all, but—”

“The floor isn’t a great place to be passing out,” Demyx says with a nod. “I’ve slept on a lot of floors and trust me, none of them have ever been that comfy.”

Aeleus glances at him with a sigh. “I would think so. He didn’t stir at all when I carried him, so I’m hoping that a rest in a real bed will be…longer, more fruitful for him.” He exhales through his fingers and brings his eyes back to the countertop. Even cleared, it’s still marred with coffee stains and pen smears and things that look suspiciously like burn marks.

He goes quiet again and Demyx watches him as he chews on his fries. He swallows his current bite and shifts forward on his stool. “…Ienzo works too hard, doesn’t he?”

Aeleus pulls his head from his hands and looks at Demyx, truly looks at him this time instead of from the corner of his eye. There’s something unreadable in the amber of his gaze and when he gives Demyx a smile, it doesn’t reach that far up. “Yes,” he says. “It’s always been a problem he’s had. Even as a child, he was always pushing himself too far, eager to please all of us. At least then, I felt like I could help him, pull him back when he stretched himself over the edge. Now…” He looks behind them, to the replica laid across the table. In all the weeks it’s been there, it still remains unchanged. “…now, I feel there’s not much I can do.”

Demyx feels incredibly stupid as he keeps chewing and it’s the only thing he can hear again. He tugs his box of fries to the side, then grabs the other one and reaches along the counter. He’s just barely able to reach the empty space in front of Aeleus and he gets the box into position with a slight toss. “Hey,” he says, sliding back to his seat. “No way I’m going to eat all of these before they go cold.”

Aeleus looks at the box of fries, face stuck in the tragic limbo between laughing and crying. Fortunately, he decides on neither; he reaches under the counter and pulls out another stool, then sits and opens the lid. He picks up a fry and holds it in front of him. “I suppose not,” he says. “Not even you could eat that many fries of this size.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Demyx shoves on his best look of faux offense and he can see Aeleus’s lips twitch upward, just a bit.

“Nothing bad,” he says, and he shoves the fry into his mouth.

For a while, Demyx lets the both of them eat without interruption. He’s plowing through his food compared to Aeleus—he wonders if the man only took the fries to be polite—and soon he’s only got a couple left in the box. He grabs the paper bag to wipe some of the salt off his hands, because it feels incredibly unacceptable to use his pants in front of Aeleus when the man was just a couple minutes ago attempting to clean the uncleanable of Ienzo’s lab. Feeling slightly less greasy, Demyx clears his throat to break the silence once again.

“Aeleus,” he says—and no matter how many times he repeats it in his head, the name still feels weird leaving his lips. “Does he really have to do all of this on his own?”

Aeleus’s face tenses, hardening like stone, and Demyx breaks into a ramble again on instinct. “I don’t mean, like, that you guys aren’t _trying_ to help him or anything, of course not, but, like…with the coding thing, he said Vex—Even was the only one who could help him do it. He said Ansem couldn’t code for beans and like, I’m inclined to believe him, but…” He takes a second to breathe, and to check Aeleus’s face for any indication that he’s stepping too far. “…you guys are all scientists, right?” he cautiously continues. “You and Dilan really can’t help with this replica thing, at all?”

At first, Aeleus stays silent. His gaze is rock solid, but it’s not directed towards Demyx, more towards the box of french fries which is arguably more innocent. He exhales through his nose, loud enough to hear, then reaches and rubs at his jaw. “Neither Dilan nor I are scientists of the heart like Even or Lord Ansem,” he says at last. “It did not stop us from assisting in the darker parts of their research, of course. We are just as culpable, even if we did not fully understand the details of what we were doing.” He sighs and drops his hand. “I wish I had retained more, of all the explanation Even tried to give us. But even then, the replica program didn’t begin until after we became Nobodies, and our relationships were…strained, at that point.”

Demyx nods. No reason to inquire more into the word: the meaning is clear enough from the tone. He shuts the styrofoam box, which at this point only holds the crispy bits of french fry not worth eating, and rests his elbows on either side of it. “…sorry,” he says. “It was a dumb question to ask. Obviously you’d be helping him if you knew what to do. It was just, Even made it sound like all of you were bigwig heart researchers and I guess I just…assumed.”

Aeleus scoffs, but his face does look a bit softer. “Well, it would be wrong to say we weren’t all interested, when Xehanort and Even began their deep research into the workings of the heart. But no, I do not consider myself a ‘bigwig heart researcher.’ Intriguing though the studies of the heart may be, they are not why I originally applied for an apprenticeship.”

Demyx leans his cheek against his palm. “Why did you, then?”

“I was interested in more material sciences,” Aeleus says, eyes lifting towards the ceiling with an almost wistful look. “Truthfully, I have a passion for geology.”

Demyx stares flatly at him, until Aeleus actually looks down and makes eye contact again. “Aeleus,” he says, “you realize that’s the equivalent of me saying I’m into marine biology, right?”

It shocks a laugh out of Aeleus, one that actually sounds genuine. “Maybe so, petulant child!” He grins, absolutely no harshness behind the words. “You’re spending too much time with Ienzo,” he says.

“What, he’s the only one with a license to sass around here?” Demyx grins back, sitting up straighter. “What do you know? Maybe he’s picking it up from spending too much time with me!”

“Oh no, Ienzo’s been like that since he was small,” Aeleus says. He picks up another fry and twists it between his fingers. “If he picked it up from anyone, it was most certainly Even.” The relaxation that almost seemed back at home on his face dampens, but Aeleus shoves the fry into his mouth and makes it harder to read.

Demyx brings his hands together and rests his chin on top of them. “…yeah,” he starts, “Even definitely has a similar sense of humor. Took me a while to pick up on when he was actually frustrated with me and when he was just being…him.”

“Ah, that does sound like him.” Aeleus isn’t looking at him again and Demyx can’t help feeling like he’s taken eight steps back. “He comes off colder than he truly is, as I’m sure you saw.”

“Mhm.” Demyx considers leaving it at that; it’s probably the safer option. But it doesn’t feel right, when Aeleus has got such prominent worry set into his face. “I think he warmed up quicker talking about you guys, though,” he continues. “He had a ton of funny stories. Like, is it true that you guys bought out an entire stock of sea salt ice cream once to keep Ansem from buying Ienzo more?”

Aeleus’s lips twitch into a smile and he brings a hand up to hide it. “Yes,” he says, “we did indeed do that once, in an attempt to curb Lord Ansem’s and by extension Ienzo’s obsession with the flavor. It backfired completely.”

“Oh?” Demyx leans forward a little. “Even made it sound like a genius idea.”

“Even doesn’t like to admit when his plans fail, even the silly ones.” Aeleus’s smile grows. “And there were plenty of silly ones. This time, we spent upwards of a thousand munny buying out the entire stock, expecting that when Lord Ansem brought Ienzo by for their daily—twice daily, at that point, ice cream run, they would take the lack of their favorite flavor as a sign to skip the snack that time. But of course not.”

“Of course not,” Demyx echoes.

“Ienzo was upset, as expected,” Aeleus sighs, “and Lord Ansem, well-meaning fool that he can be, offered to buy him not one ice cream, but three of a different flavor, to make up for the lack of his favorite. We didn’t realize what had happened until they returned to the castle. Ienzo had already eaten two fudgesicles and was halfway through his third.” He shakes his head. “The boy was violently ill within the hour. He’s not eaten a fudgesicle since.”

No fudgesicles, got it. “Even left out that part,” Demyx says.

“For fear of embarrassing him and Ienzo both, I’m sure.” Aeleus drops his hand and his smile hasn’t faded. “He often doesn’t realize he’s doing it, but Even puts a lot of care into his image. Of course he would tell you stories and leave out the parts that make it seem like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He almost certainly wanted to present you with the image of a competent adult, someone you could trust to see his plan to fruition without any hitches or hiccups.”

He says it so confidently, reading the man like an open book despite the fact that he’s an indeterminate number of worlds away. Aeleus must know Even really well. Demyx frowns. “I hate to say it, but he failed pretty spectacularly,” he says. “It’s really obvious he’s a huge dork just like the rest of us.”

“That he is,” Aeleus laughs. “I do appreciate the times he lets himself be a dork without all the fronting, though. He’s…quite the person, underneath his icy shell.”

_Really_ well. Demyx notes the wistful tinge to Aeleus’s voice, the softness in his eyes. Aeleus is quiet, isn’t prone to the bombastic spouts of rage at Even’s absence like he’s seen from Ienzo and Dilan. Of course Demyx wasn’t so stupid to think it meant Aeleus cared less; but he didn’t think about the possibility that he just cared _differently._ He’s around, he’s noticed Dilan and Aeleus together. He’s noticed the gentler care Aeleus exudes there, too. Maybe he’s an idiot, for not putting pieces that now seem so obvious together. “He’s something,” Demyx says, almost absently.

“He’s something,” Aeleus repeats, the smile still lingering on his face. He takes another fry and chews, letting the silence sit once again. Two, maybe three fries later, Demyx isn’t keeping exact track, he speaks. “Ienzo said…you went back to his lab?”

And there it is, that same tinge of desperate hope he’s heard from all of them. Demyx hates, _hates_ how often he’s had to shatter it. “Yeah,” he says, “but I found nothing, not a single notebook. It’s not any help.”

“It lets us know that he’s moved on, at least,” Aeleus says, but his smile is not as genuine this time. “Ienzo inherited his trance-like fixation with work from him, after all. At first, I was afraid he got himself stuck in some kind of loop, not realizing how much time was going by, but at least that’s not the case, that he’s doing something else on his pathway home. Thank you, Demyx, for going to check.”

“Uh, yeah.” Demyx kicks his heels against the stool. Sure, he went and checked and didn’t find a single clue to Even’s whereabouts. It’s not _enough._

Aeleus stands up and shuts the takeout box. He carefully tucks the stool back under the counter. “And thank you for the fries,” he says. “I’m going to bring them to Dilan and see if he wants to finish them before they’re too cold to be edible. If Ienzo stumbles back down here while you’re still around, tell him I want to see him before he loses himself in work for another twelve hours.” He moves towards the stairs back up to the offices.

“Yeah, okay,” Demyx mutters. At least that’s something useful. Demyx feels exactly the opposite at the moment. Aeleus is almost around the corner and Demyx doesn’t think, just pushes himself to his feet. “Aeleus?”

Aeleus stops and takes a step back out of the hall to look at him. “Yes, Demyx?”

He freezes for a second. Honestly, Demyx isn’t sure what he wanted to say—but he sure has to say something now. He clasps his hands behind him, eyes dropping to the ground. “…he’s going to come back,” he decides on at last.

He can feel Aeleus’s eyes on him and, eventually, he forces himself to look up and meet them. The brown gaze holds a certain warmth that feels like something he doesn’t deserve; but Aeleus tips his head and offers a smile just as warm. “I know,” he says, and then he turns and leaves Demyx in an empty lab.

Demyx drops back heavily onto the stool. He can’t say he didn’t _try._ With both elbows on the counter again, he rests his head in his hands. “Of course he’s going to come back,” he says aloud. “He’s got _Aeleus_ waiting for him.” If he had someone like that, someone who talked about him with the gentlest of care, someone whose eyes lit up every time they said his name…maybe he’d want to go home, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aeleus would look better with brown eyes, don't @ me.  
> Also, apparently I've been spelling Lexaeus's name wrong for the entire time I was writing this fic. Everything's fixed now, you didn't see ANYTHING.
> 
> Hopefully there isn't as much of a wait for the next chapter. I like to keep a chapter ahead, and chapter 7 is...long. Really long. I apologize in advanced.


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